Posts with tagged with "wii u"

There's always much to do when it's discovered that some game system or another isn't region-free. The recent "revelation" that Wii U will also be region-locked has drawn no small amount of ire from the perpetual justice-seekers of the world who seem to think that such a move is without precedent. Of course, what's more uncommon is indeed a system that happens to be region-free by default. And wouldn't ya know it, literally every single home console from Nintendo has been region-locked in one way or another.

You know, it's easy to forget, in these godlessly offensive modern days, how bad gamers actually used to have it when it came to console launches. The Wii U is gonna launch with twenty-three games, many of which co-exist as major installments of bigtime franchises happily among the piles of worthless spew-ware. A new Mario? Ninja Gaiden, Assassin's Creed, Tekken, Black Ops 2, Darksiders, Batman? No man could even play all these damned things with any amount of timeliness.

I used to pride myself on my video game collection. My collection of GameCube titles, in particular, was a sight to behold. The GameCube came out just before I graduated high school, so while I was in college and working part-time I had quite the expendable income with which to buy whatever I wanted. So while I picked up every GameCube game worth playing, I also picked up a few terrible games just because they were part of a series and would look nice on my shelf.

The other day I was talking to Mr. Faller about the impending Wii U launch details conference and we started being total idiots and proposing wild, impossible scenarios that might be the MEGATONS that we all so desperately crave. What is the deal with this shared attraction toward earth-rending announcements that descend from upon high to shake the ground we stand on anyway? As a fictional butler once said, "

It's true, I did it, I bought a new TV. Well, technically it isn't new. Or wasn't, I mean. I mean, it was new at some point, but when I bought it, it wasn't new anymore. I think Gamestop calls this state "pre-owned," which is stupid since almost everything has been pre-owned even before anyone ever bought it, by the company and the store and stuff, just call it what it is, my TV is used, USED!

Anyone who's been around the gaming scene for long enough knows that the run-up period to console launches is always packed full of bizarre speculation. The Wii U has had its share so far, but what seems to be burning up the nets most lately are the hushed, secretive rumblings about the games we'll see from third parties at launch. Each minor revelation seems squeezed out over secret incantations, all bits of information parceled out replete with either public relations spin-control or braggadocio—and it's getting harder to know who's blowing smoke out their ass, who isn't, and what exactly these developers are allowed to tell us under their various non-disclosure agreements.

Shigeru Miyamoto plays Angry Birds. That means he has a smart phone. Someone else at Nintendo probably has a phone too and on that phone they’ve downloaded a gaming app and seen online leaderboards or asynchronous multiplayer. Heck, they’ve probably seen live multiplayer. Someone over there is probably playing an online game right now. On a phone. So why is it, in 2012, that Nintendo still doesn’t seem to understand how to develop appropriate online systems for their own consoles and games?

I guess there's a new Pikmin game coming out this Christmas for this new Wii, and Nintendo Land and some other stuff. It's gonna have the tablet controller, and some new firmware, and it's gonna have HD! But man, I just cannot muster up even the tiniest squirt of enthusiasm when it comes to talking or thinking about it, whatsoever. Not even a single drop of my liquids eke out for it, nary a vapor.

I didn't get a chance to attend E3 this year, so I was left to the devices of those lucky masses of internet journalists and their investigative sensibilities. Whatever they described or filmed was all I had to sate my obsessively detail-oriented curiosities. As expected, I was not satisfied. Can you perform a spin jump in New Super Mario Bros. U without shaking the controller? Does Pikmin 3 use MotionPlus for its aiming, like Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned in his on-stage demonstration, or infrared like reported in virtually every single media hands-on?

As just about every major disaster comes and goes, a single question tends to percolate to the brim of public consciousness: how soon is too soon? That is to say, how far in time must we be distanced from an event until we can analyze it with some sense of objectivity and without the immediate sense of horror or disappointment? Speaking of disasters, Nintendo's tragic "loss" of E3 2012 may not have warranted space on the front pages of the world's major broadsheets, but within the fishbowl world of Nintendo and its eager dependants, this single event might almost be considered Nintendo's very own Dunkirk.